Shotgun Players started performing 20 years ago in the basement of a Berkeley pizzeria. Now it’s got its own building, but the company has stuck with its founding principles: taking on little-known or brand new plays, and working hard to create theater for the community.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the company is presenting an entire season of world premieres: five brand news plays. KALW’S Molly Samuel stopped in on rehearsals for the season’s final show.

* * *

MOLLY SAMUEL: On a cool fall evening, playwright and director Mark Jackson is working with the cast of “God’s Plot” at the Shotgun Players’ rehearsal space in Emeryville. Act 1, Scene 9. Two Puritans, and a third character with a mysterious past, are getting ready to put on a performance.

The actors work through the scene several times, perfecting movements and lines, getting the tone just right. It’s exacting work, and they’re clearly enjoying it, breaking out into laughter at the end of -- and sometimes during -- their run-throughs.

PATRICK DOOLEY: People that are working here are here because they want to sweat.

Patrick Dooley is the company’s founder and artistic director.

DOOLEY: They want it to be hard, they want to do the thing that’s just beyond their reach, and so I think that kind of like mindedness is something people also respond to in the work. There’s that primal, "aaaaaahhhh".

Dooley didn’t set out to found a theater company, never mind inspire something primal. 20 years ago, when he first visited the Bay Area, he thought he was just passing through.

DOOLEY: I had a friend, we were going to go to Seattle. Nirvana had just released their album Nevermind. 1991, 92, everyone was going there. Lots of coffee shops, whatever, rain.

But while he was in Berkeley, someone suggested he go check out a theater group practicing in the basement of a pizzeria. He acted in a play, on the condition he could direct the next one. And then he directed another, and another. Soon the group was getting reviews. People were coming to watch.

DOOLEY: We totally had our own grunge theater then. Bootstraps, and patching it together with duct tape. And I sold the tickets, I ran the lightboard. We made our lights out of coffee cans. I mean I literally would drive in the road and if I saw pieces of two-by-four in the road I’d take them and throw them in the back of my car.

Over the years, he says, the company never grew quickly. But it always grew. Each year offered more ambitious plays, with bigger casts. In 2004, the company moved into its own theater, the Ashby Stage, in south Berkeley.

DOOLEY: I’ve had a lot of experiences sitting in the theater in the last couple years where I’ll look around and like how did we get here.

"God’s Plot" is based on real events; it’s about the first play performed in America ... before the Revolutionary War.

MARK JACKSON: These three guys performed a play in a tavern in 1665, which is the colonial time.

The play in question was called “Ye Bear and Ye Cub.” It was a satire about taxes. In it, a mother bear, representing England, demands honey from a cub. The script for the original play doesn’t exist anymore, So Jackson imagined what the play might have been.

ROBERT HURWITT: Shotgun is one of the companies that I’m continuously excited about.

Hurwitt is the theater critic at the San Francisco Chronicle.

HURWITT: I find myself going to each new production really expectant, really hoping and expecting that I’m going to see something new.

He says, Shotgun Players’ decision to do an entire season of new plays is bold

HURWITT: Because it’s completely unknown, because the audience has no, oh, "Glass Menagerie" or "Fiddler on the Roof" or "As You Like It," we know what that is.

But, he says, it’s also smart.

HURWITT: You know, it’s the old quote from Robert Browning, “But a man's reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for."

The Shotgun Players also work to extend their reach beyond the stage, to people who might not usually go to the theater. The company gives tickets away to community organizations. And in the first week of every play, the tickets are pay as you can.

DOOLEY: You can get in for 25 cents and some people do that. They come in, there are folks that live in the neighborhood and they’ll come in, throw 50 cents on the counter and come see the play. And that’s really important for us that theater be something that everybody can experience.

Which is one of the reasons Dooley’s excited about "God’s Plot," since it’s about the first play performed in America, and the impact it had on its community.

Back at the rehearsal, it’s nearly the end of the first act. A rambunctious character named Tryal Pore bursts onto the scene.

She creates chaos ... a finely tuned, carefully practiced, raucous chaos ... like a rock song. A good place to end up, especially for a theater company founded by a Nirvana fan in a pizzeria.

Berkeley’s Shotgun Players celebrates 20 years on stage

The Berkeley theater company Shotgun Players started performing 20 years ago in the basement of a Berkeley pizzeria. Now it’s got its own building, but the company has stuck with its founding principles: taking on little-known or brand new plays, and working hard to create theater for the community.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the company is presenting an entire season of world premieres: five brand news plays. KALW’S Molly Samuel stopped in on rehearsals for the season’s final show.

* * *

MOLLY SAMUEL: On a cool fall evening, playwright and director Mark Jackson is working with the cast of “God’s Plot” at the Shotgun Players’ rehearsal space in Emeryville. Act 1, Scene 9. Two Puritans, and a third character with a mysterious past, are getting ready to put on a performance.

The actors work through the scene several times, perfecting movements and lines, getting the tone just right. It’s exacting work, and they’re clearly enjoying it, breaking out into laughter at the end of — and sometimes during — their run-throughs.

PATRICK DOOLEY: People that are working here are here because they want to sweat.

Patrick Dooley is the company’s founder and artistic director.

DOOLEY: They want it to be hard, they want to do the thing that’s just beyond their reach, and so I think that kind of like mindedness is something people also respond to in the work. There’s that primal, “aaaaaahhhh”.

Dooley didn’t set out to found a theater company, never mind inspire something primal. 20 years ago, when he first visited the Bay Area, he thought he was just passing through.

DOOLEY: I had a friend, we were going to go to Seattle. Nirvana had just released their album Nevermind. 1991, 92, everyone was going there. Lots of coffee shops, whatever, rain.

But while he was in Berkeley, someone suggested he go check out a theater group practicing in the basement of a pizzeria. He acted in a play, on the condition he could direct the next one. And then he directed another, and another. Soon the group was getting reviews. People were coming to watch.

DOOLEY: We totally had our own grunge theater then. Bootstraps, and patching it together with duct tape. And I sold the tickets, I ran the lightboard. We made our lights out of coffee cans. I mean I literally would drive in the road and if I saw pieces of two-by-four in the road I’d take them and throw them in the back of my car.

Over the years, he says, the company never grew quickly. But it always grew. Each year offered more ambitious plays, with bigger casts. In 2004, the company moved into its own theater, the Ashby Stage, in south Berkeley.

DOOLEY: I’ve had a lot of experiences sitting in the theater in the last couple years where I’ll look around and like how did we get here.

“God’s Plot” is based on real events; it’s about the first play performed in America … before the Revolutionary War.

MARK JACKSON: These three guys performed a play in a tavern in 1665, which is the colonial time.

The play in question was called “Ye Bear and Ye Cub.” It was a satire about taxes. In it, a mother bear, representing England, demands honey from a cub. The script for the original play doesn’t exist anymore, So Jackson imagined what the play might have been.

ROBERT HURWITT: Shotgun is one of the companies that I’m continuously excited about.

Hurwitt is the theater critic at the San Francisco Chronicle.

HURWITT: I find myself going to each new production really expectant, really hoping and expecting that I’m going to see something new.

He says, Shotgun Players’ decision to do an entire season of new plays is bold

HURWITT: Because it’s completely unknown, because the audience has no, oh, “Glass Menagerie” or “Fiddler on the Roof” or “As You Like It,” we know what that is.

But, he says, it’s also smart.

HURWITT: You know, it’s the old quote from Robert Browning, “But a man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.”

The Shotgun Players also work to extend their reach beyond the stage, to people who might not usually go to the theater. The company gives tickets away to community organizations. And in the first week of every play, the tickets are pay as you can.

DOOLEY: You can get in for 25 cents and some people do that. They come in, there are folks that live in the neighborhood and they’ll come in, throw 50 cents on the counter and come see the play. And that’s really important for us that theater be something that everybody can experience.

Which is one of the reasons Dooley’s excited about “God’s Plot,” since it’s about the first play performed in America, and the impact it had on its community.

Back at the rehearsal, it’s nearly the end of the first act. A rambunctious character named Tryal Pore bursts onto the scene.

She creates chaos … a finely tuned, carefully practiced, raucous chaos … like a rock song. A good place to end up, especially for a theater company founded by a Nirvana fan in a pizzeria.